Grandma decorating warm gingerbread cookies. A ruddy ham, glistening in honey and studded with cloves, roasting in the oven. Slices of pumpkin pie passed around the table.
Close your eyes after taking a sip of the Harvest Ale at Kelsey Creek Brewing and warm visions from holiday greeting cards or nostalgic Norman Rockwell portraits of family gatherings will dance in your head.
The Kelseyville pub’s seasonal beer shares misty images through aromas of nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, soothed by vanilla and brightened by candied citrus peel that waft gently over rich notes of molasses and caramelized malt. It’s an inviting, almost heartwarming pour redolent of the holidays.
Brewer Ron Chips has prepared the Harvest Ale for the past few years as a winter welcome. The recipe includes several spices, citrus and vanilla bean, but it is a surprisingly mannered beer.
“I’ve had spice beers that were over the top,” he observed. “I didn’t want that. I wanted balance.”
The spices — nutmeg, cinnamon and allspice — are in the forefront as you take a sip. But after a brief flurry they descend, falling softly into a hearth. Roasted flavors loom from this welcoming place, revealing dark coffee, unsweetened chocolate and molasses.
Yet this dense ambience never takes over the palate. Spices loiter in the background. A lighter honeyed impression flits in and out. And hints of citrus lift any brooding spirits. It’s a beer that invites you into the holidays and insists that you stay for another round.
Harvest Ale results from a well-considered recipe. Chips employs malts for specific characters, such as the raisin flavors of crystal 120 or acrid notes in chocolate malt. He added hops just once during the brewing process to ease up on the bitterness. And in an unorthodox move, Chips poured in a little Steen’s Syrup.
“I’m a big Steen’s fan,” he said. “That’s where it gets the molasses.”
The first round of spice came at the end of the boil, for just about 10 minutes.
“I want to get the flavors without cooking the spices,” Chips explained.
Once the brewing process wrapped, he added the second batch of spices. This included the zest and vanilla, bundled with the ground spices. This steeped for a week, leading to a mellow character that hides 6 percent of alcohol in its shadow.
Yes, this is old-fashioned Christmas, poured into a glass. But the most impressive aspect of the Harvest Ale then is the balance of charred, toasted, bittersweet, swarthy and incisive flavors Chips sought and achieved.
There is no arrogant, pushy note to distract you from just savoring a great beer.
Dave Faries can be reached at 900-2016
